#we still need to stick together and maybe acquire a Mario

[snipsies]

Also super important to keep in mind and be aware of! There’s so much fear mongering and very little media literacy! I didn’t think about this till I saw Hank Greens video (above) and it helped me rationalize and calm down.

[itsbenedict]

Kingdoms and Koopas: Ep. 6

K&K is a Fate Accelerated campaign set in the Mario universe, which I’m running for three players:

Bee @thebeeskneesocks​, playing Kandace Koopa

Jovian @jovian12​, playing Cozmo Naut

Malky @sleepdepravity​, playing Dr. Chevy Chain

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Previously on Kingdoms and Koopas, the party survived a harrowing underground experience, arrested a bigshot crime lord probably, acquired a magical item, and were in the vicinity of Kandace while she did horrifying things.

This time... we’re leaving the Koopa Kingdom for a fun vacation! Woooo!

So, Kandace wants them there Music Keys, still- and her favorite test subject I mean minion I mean friend, Cozmo, is all too happy to go on a fun adventure to help her get them. Unfortunately, Dr. Chevy Chain would be all too happy to never interact with these chucklefucks again, so she needs an alternate reason to follow Kandace and Cozmo. That reason is... her boss at the hospital has ordered her to make a house call in the Magic Kingdom, which happens to be where the other two are headed!

Unfortunately, the road to the Magic Kingdom has problems on it. One of the problems is bandits. Y’know, Bandits. They’re like Shy Guys, but their masks are more like faces and they steal your crap? Bandits. They’re here to be a random encounter.

Cozmo and Chevy begin fighting them off, but Kandace has an idea to end the fight quicker than that. Y’know her curse that she has? Her magical talking shadow, Carbonado, who makes her life difficult? Well, she’s prepared to bargain this time around- in hopes that maybe he can actually help.

Carbonado’s terms- in exchange for using the darkness to get very big and scary and scare the bandits off- are that Kandace must behave. This is a bit of a tall order, and she bargains him down to... using manners while in the Magic Kingdom. Which are still, likely, terms she’s going to violate, but hey.

Further down the road, they encounter... someone... they’ve... met before? It’s... a Shy Guy wearing a trenchcoat and a big bushy mustache, who would like to sell them some merchandise. It’s Deals Guy! 

Immediate attempts to rip off Shady Guy’s mustache again (isn’t he supposed to be in jail?) are met with failure, as this happens to be... the Real Deals Guy. He actually has decent stuff to sell! Or... would. He’s kind of out of inventory right now, and is actually looking to buy. We try out the new Rich system I threw together (an extra stat you roll, Rich, which depending on the outcome tells you whether you can afford the thing, and whether you need to decrease your Rich to do so). Rolls ain’t great, but Kandace does buy a Super Leaf, once it becomes clear that the random crap off the floor he’s selling does include some useful items.

As they proceed, and as they’re getting closer to the magic kingdom, they meet a wandering wizard- and he has Prophecies for them! One about hearts, one about dreams, and one about paths. He can give them two true prophecies, and another false one- and they have to pick which ones will be true and which will be false. Which... shouldn’t be how prophecies work, but they agree, pick that “paths” should be false, and Merlon gets all SHA-ZIBBY, SHA-ZOOBY on ‘em. The prophecies are as follows:

'Thou shalt never be betrayed by those thou trusteth with all thy heart and all thy mind.'

‘The bow is a truer guide to the arrow's path than the arrow.' 

'A dream is a nightmare waiting to happen.'

The second, on the subject of paths, is conveniently the false one- which they can get the true version of just by inverting it. Still... cryptic as hell, though.

Finally, though, they arrive in the Magic Kingdom.

Chapter 3: From the Stars

Unfortunately- besides Chevy, who has an address she’s meant to head to- they have no idea where to go. The Music Key’s magical signature is just “up”- somewhere in the sky- and they need to find a way to get there. (And, Chevy needs to find a way to figure out how to reach the address in question, since the Mario world doesn’t have GPS.)

So they check an information booth, manned by a Star Kid named Astrid. She gets out a telescope and checks out the spot in the sky they mention- which, as it appears, is a strange ribbon of rainbow light... hm. I wonder...

As for getting up there- well, there’s ways. All kinds of ways! Except, there was recently a large destructive bomb-related accident down at the local Cannon District (where they keep all the Cannons That Shoot You Into Space), and there’s only two cannons left standing. Bullet Bud and Robert Omb attempt to convince the party (minus Chevy, who’s gone off to do her job elsewhere in the city after obtaining a map) that their cannon is the safe one and that the other guy’s cannon is a rickety mess that’ll explode in their faces.

(The paths prophecy, by the way, applied to this situation, though in keeping with Merlon’s “Useless Prophecies” aspect, nobody realized that the “arrow” is the Bullet Bill, and the “bow” is the explosive that fires the bullet- or the Bob-omb.)

No, they solve this dilemma by arbitrarily picking the right cannon- which Cozmo tests first. Unfortunately, they fail to notice a problem in time to stop it (but succeed in noticing it happening at all.) Robert Omb snuck around the side of Bud’s cannon and blew up as it fired, knocking Cozmo off-course. He goes flying up into the sky, and... well, he’ll probably be fine. Let’s assume he’s fine.

Kandace, noticing the sabotage, attempts to... mete out justice? Which is to say... draw a teleportation circle, and attempt to shove Robert Omb into it, to get rid of the cheating bastard. She barely fails the Forceful contest, but Bullet Bud helps her out with sending his rival off to... well, Ted the Storm God’s cloud, is the only place Kandace knows how to make her random-teleport spell come out, right now. Gonna be one confused Bob-omb, suddenly in the middle of Kam Ekademy.

Meanwhile... Chevy has a job to do. She’s arrived at the address, to make the house call she was specifically needed for. See, there was some kind of magical accident that cost everyone in a given radius of the patient to be unable to control their hands, which made things difficult for normal doctors. But Chevy doesn’t even have any hands, and so was considered perfect for the job.

Arriving at Rainbow Cruise Tours, she encounters a crew of concerned Bob-ombs who explain the situation. Their captain, apparently, stumbled in one day with a big piece of magical crystal sticking out of his chest, and fell into a coma on the bed. The crew didn’t have hands, but they also didn’t have surgical training- and most of the surgeons in the Magic Kingdom are Wizzerds, known for pretty much just having hands.

The job itself turns out to be pretty easy, and Chevy successfully removes the foreign object and resuscitates the patient- an odd, stout, yellow man with a heavy accent, a curly purple wig, and an inability to shut up. The Great Flavio invites Chevy on a sky cruise as a reward for her efforts, which she- having nothing better to do, now- agrees to. Like a fool.

Partway through the lovely flight on the sky boat in question, there is a THUMP as something impacts the side of the ship. And then manages to grab hold of the dangling anchor, rather than slide off the ship and fall to its death. This something, as it happens, is Cozmo Naut, who for reasons unknown was recently fired out of a cannon into the sky. Weird. Chevy confirms he isn’t going to fall, and then entirely declines to try and help pull him up.

Kandace, after probably doing a crime by magically banishing someone by force to another Kingdom, climbs into Bud’s cannon and fires herself up there, getting enough altitude that she can reach the Rainbow Cruise and rescue Cozmo using her broom (which would’ve been too difficult to ride all the way up there by herself.)

The cruise, though, appears to be making a stop somewhere else before heading up to... the rainbow ribbon in the sky that you’ve probably already figured out what it is. That they’ve actually figured out what it is, actually, so I’ll just tell you: it’s Rainbow Road, the famous kart-racing track.

But the pit stop is at... oh, just the Royal Castle of the Magic Kingdom. For guests to meet the princess, and stuff. No big.

As they arrive- and Cozmo and Kandace line up to meet the princess, while Chevy hangs back because when can Chevy ever be bothered- they encounter a... familiar face? Sort of? Except for how X-Nauts wear face-concealing goggles and stuff? It’s an X-Naut Cozmo used to know from back during the whole moon thing- Oneiro Naut. They catch up a little bit- apparently, Oneiro is doing some guard duty for the princess’s meet-and-greet, and in their spare time is researching dreams.

Researching dreams...? Dreams, dreams... there definitely wasn’t a prophecy about that...

Anyway, Cozmo and Kandace eventually reach the front of the line, and are face-to-face with Princess Opal herself!

(art by Bee)

Now, here’s a little bit of Kandace backstory that I don’t think I’ve mentioned in these recaps yet: when Kandace was younger, she was experimenting with teleportation spells, and... accidentally teleported herself into this very castle. It was a little surprising, but Opal took it in stride, and told the young magikoopa that she knew she’d be an amazingly powerful witch some day, before helping her get back home.

It was a pretty formative moment for young Kandace- and now, here she is, once again meeting her hero.

Who... absolutely doesn’t recognize her. Which is... fairly crushing, for a moment. But... hang on. This Opal is weirdly... sedate? Very calm, regal, princess-like. Which isn’t at all how she remembers her.

Suddenly, there’s a spark of realization, and Opal tells Kandace- and her friend- to head through a door just behind the throne area. Confused, they agree... and are dropped through a trapdoor and fall and fall and fall through some kind of magical sparkly hole. They land in... what looks like some kind of extremely messy magical workshop. And in that workshop is... the real Princess Opal. 

She explains that the Opal doing the meet-and-greet up in the throne room is a decoy, there to handle all the princess-type duties she finds super-boring. What she doesn’t find boring is Kandace, who she does in fact remember. And she... has Kandace look at some weird magic instruments, and pokes her with a glowy detector rod thingy, and has her hold an orb which she then tosses into a machine which explodes, and generally sort of geeks out about Kandace’s nonspecific magic specialness. She’s very excited.

It’s kind of difficult for Kandace to follow a lot of Opal’s projects, which are very advanced and very hard to determine the actual purpose of. It seems there’s a lot of stuff here that’s unfinished, or that was never really meant to do anything besides look cool in the first place. Opal’s running all over the place, unable to stick to a topic for very long- because whose attention span wouldn’t be taxed by the many wonders of magic, right?

Anyway, Cozmo and Kandace tell her about their quest- to find a magical music-related orb of incredible power. Opal tells them that she’s pretty sure the big tournament is going to have something like that as a prize.

Tournament?

Yeah, the kart-racing tournament. On Rainbow Road. That one. Do they want to enter? YES they want to enter.

So Opal- who’s big into kart racing, along with apparently everything else- offers them pick of her old experimental karts, to borrow for the race! (She herself has been, uh, banned from participating, because she kept breaking vehicle regulations and causing magical accidents during races. Apparently the issue was bad enough that they actually banned their own princess, so... well, it’s probably totally safe.)

Cozmo picks out something with flame decals and lots of firepower- just a big ol’ beefy boy of a car, with a high top speed at the expense of handling. (He tests it out by crashing it directly into the wall of Opal’s workshop- pretty good at crashing!) Kandace, rather than pick out an old kart, works with Opal to soup up her broom, giving it a magical bike mode that increases its top speed at the expense of flight capabilities. 

Meanwhile, Chevy is approached by a Buzzy Beetle who represents the Rainbow Road course management. Apparently, there are so many outlandish injuries that happen on Rainbow Road that most of their doctors have quit in horror, so they’re really looking for last-minute replacements. And so it is that Chevy takes on a part-time job, and is escorted to Rainbow Road by a Lakitu crew.

The two racers, meanwhile, are escorted to the track personally, on karts towed behind Opal’s magical royal chariot. It’s a very stylish entrance, only slightly dampened by a Monty Mole mechanic at the track demanding that Opal leave immediately, in a panicked and horrified tone of voice. He can’t do this again! He can’t! (It’s fine, though- Opal’s just going to be spectating, honest!)

So we would leave off there, but... a couple strange things happen. One thing is that... Oneiro Naut is somehow amongst the crowds of spectators, despite having been at the castle a minute ago and not having been aboard the chariot when they left. So that’s weird.

And another thing is that... Kandace can still track the Music Key’s energy signature. And where it appears to be is... still up. Still straight up, in the sky just above Rainbow Road.

...It’s probably fine! See you next time!

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[prisonerofthedark-blog1]

Source for Super Mario Names

.

When I discovered that out I did two things. First, I whipped out my message (yes, I maintain it which real/nerdy that I still need a well used NES connected in my room) and then made sure I will be able to match the game at will. (I can. Childhood not wasted.)

Secondly, I launched down a rabbit hole of looking through Mario internet sites and Articles and Wikis. In the process, I stumbled upon the etymologies of the brands of a number of the main players in the Mario universe. Consequently, in honor of the video game which often changed the world, here they're, presented in handy 11-item describe form.

Mario.

When Mario debuted in the arcade game "Donkey Kong", he was only called Jumpman. (Which also happens to be the generic brand regarding that Michael Jordan spread leg Nike logo. 2 of the most renowned icons ever before both have generic versions of themselves known as Jumpman. But merely at least one has nowadays arrived at a point of simply being so impressive that he shaved himself a Hitler mustache before filming a professional and the balls were had by nobody to fix him.)

In 1980, as the Nintendo of America team brought in Jumpman to raise him right into a franchise-leading star (Hayden Christensen style), someone discovered that he looked just like their Seattle office building's landlord... a fellow named Mario Segale.

Mario Segale did not obtain a dime for becoming the namesake of probably the most prominent video game character ever, but he probably isn't very concerned; in 1998 he sold the asphalt small business of his for around sixty dolars million. (Or 600,000 increased lives.)

Luigi.

Luigi has among the weakest brand roots of all of the super mario characters in the Mario universe (once again showing precisely why, in life that is real, he'd have a bigger inferiority complex than Frank Stallone, Abel or even that third Manning brother).

"Luigi" is merely the result of people of Japanese men trying to consider an Italian brand to enhance "Mario." Why was that the Italian label they went with? When they all moved from Japan to Seattle, the pizza spot nearest to the Nintendo headquarters called Mario & Luigi's. (It has since gone from business.)

Koopa.

Koopa is a transliterated version of the Japanese rap for the opponent turtles, "Kuppa." Stick with me right here -- kuppa is the Japanese word for a Korean plate called gukbap. Generally it's a cup of soup with elmer rice. From what I definitely tell it's totally unrelated to turtles, especially malicious ones.

In an interview, Mario's author, Shigeru Miyamoto, stated he was deciding between 3 names which are diverse due to the race of evil turtles, all of that have been called after Korean foods. (The alternative 2 were yukhoe and bibimbap.) Which means one of two things: (one) Miyamoto loves Korean food and needed to offer a tribute or even (two) Miyamoto believes Koreans are evil and have to be jumped on.

Wario.

I kind of skipped the debut of Wario -- he debuted in 1992, right around when I was hitting the generation exactly where I was extremely cool for cartoon y Nintendo games. (Me and the middle school buddies of mine were into Genesis only. I was again on Nintendo within 4 years.)

Appears the label of his functions equally in english and Japanese; I kinda assumed the English manner but didn't know about the Japanese feature. In English, he is an evil, bizarro world mirror image of Mario. The "M" turns to become a "W" and Wario is created. The name likewise operates in Japanese, wherever it is the variety of Mario and "warui," that implies "bad."

That's a very great situation, since, as I covered extensively in the list eleven Worst Japanese-To-English Translations In Nintendo History, not every language disparity finesses again and also forth quite smoothly.

Waluigi.

When I 1st read "Waluigi" I thought it was hilarious. While Wario was a natural counterbalance to Mario, Waluigi felt extremely comically shoehorned (just tacking the "wa" prefix before Luigi) -- including a huge inside joke that somehow cleared every bureaucratic step and cracked the mainstream.

Well... based on the Nintendo people, Waluigi isn't just a gloriously lazy decision or maybe an inside joke also been substantial. They *say* it is dependant upon the Japanese word ijiwaru, which means "bad guy."

I do not know. I feel like we would have to supply them much more than halfway to purchase that.

Toad.

Toad is made to look like a mushroom (or toadstool) because of his massive mushroom hat. It's a good thing the gaming systems debuted before the entire version knew how you can generate penis jokes.

Anyway, in Japan, he's called Kinopio, which happens to be a blend of the word for mushroom ("kinoko") as well as the Japanese version of Pinocchio ("pinokio"). Those mix to be something around the collections of "A Real Mushroom Boy."

Goomba.

In Japanese, these men are labeled as kuribo, which translates to "chestnut people." That makes sense because, ya know, if somebody expected you "what do chestnut folks are like?" you'd most likely get to food roughly like these figures.

Once they were imported for the American version, the team caught with the Italian initiative of theirs and called them Goombas... primarily based off of the Italian "goombah," which colloquially signifies something as "my fellow Italian friend." Furthermore, it kind of evokes the photo of low level mafia thugs without too numerous skills -- like people's younger brothers and cousins who they'd to work with or perhaps mother would yell at them. That also is true for the Mario Bros. goombas.

Birdo.

Birdo has nothing at all to do with this particular original Japanese name. Generally there, he's considered Kyasarin, that results in "Catherine."

In the teaching manual for Super Mario Bros. 2, in which Birdo debuted, his persona description reads: "Birdo considers he is a female and additionally likes to be named Birdetta."

What I believe this all means? Nintendo shockingly chosen to develop a character who battles with the gender identity of his and called him Catherine. In the event it was some time to come to America, they have feet which are cold so they determined at the last minute to call him Birdo, though he's a dinosaur. (And don't provide me the "birds are descended from dinosaurs" pop-paleontology series. Not buying that connection.) In that way, we would only understand about his gender misunderstandings if we read the mechanical, and the Japanese have been fairly certain Americans were either too lazy or perhaps illiterate to do it en masse.

Princess Toadstool/Peach.

When everyone got introduced to the Princess, she was regarded as Princess Toadstool. I suppose this made perfect sense -- Mario was set in the Mushroom Kingdom, so why wouldn't its monarch be named Princess Toadstool. Them inbreeding blue bloods are always naming their young children after the country.

No person seems to be sure precisely why they went the direction, nevertheless. In Japan, she was recognized as Princess Peach from day one. That name didn't debut here until 1993, when Yoshi's Safari came out for Super Nintendo. (By the way -- have you played Yoshi's Safari? In a bizarre twist it's a first-person shooter, the only person in the whole Mario times past. It is like something like a country music superstar making a weird rock album.)

Bowser.

In Japan, there's simply no Bowser. He's simply referred to as the King Koopa (or similar variants, including Great Demon King Koopa). So where did Bowser come from?

During the import approach, there was a problem that the American crowd wouldn't see how the seemingly insignificant turtles and big bad guy could certainly be called Koopa. Thus a marketing team put together many choices for a title, they loved Bowser the best, and also slapped it on him.

In Japan, he is still rarely known as Bowser. Around here, the title of his is now extremely ubiquitous that he is even supplanted Sha Na Na's Bowzer as America's most prominent Bowser.

Donkey Kong.

This's a far more literal interpretation than you think. "Kong" is based off King Kong. "Donkey" is a family-friendly way of calling him an ass. That is right: The title of his is a valuable variation of "Ass Ape."

Mario Bros. includes 2 plumbers, Mario and Luigi, being forced to take a look at the sewers of New York subsequent to peculiar creatures have been showing up down there. The aim of the game is defeating all of the adversaries in each and every phase. The aspects of Mario Bros. involve lunging and also only running. As opposed to coming Mario video games, players can't jump on enemies as well as squash them, except when they were previously turned on their backside. Each and every phase is a series of platforms with pipes in every corner on the display screen, on top of something termed as a "POW" obstruct in the core. Wraparound is used by phases, meaning that foes along with players that go off to a single edge will reappear on the other side.

The player gains factors by beating many opponents consecutively which enables it to participate within an extra round to acquire further points. Adversaries are defeated by kicking them more than once they have been flipped on their rear. This's carried out by punching in the platform the opponent is on straight under them. In case the player allows a lot of time to successfully pass right after achieving this, the enemy is going to flip itself also over, altering in coloring and raising velocity. Each and every level has a certain number of adversaries, while using the last adversary immediately shifting the color and raising to utmost speed. Striking a flipped adversary from underneath will cause it to right itself and begin going ever again, though it doesn't change color. or quickness

You will find four enemies: the Shellcreeper, which simply hikes around; the Sidestepper, which requires two hits to flip over; the Fighter Fly, what moves by getting and can solely be flipped when it's touching a platform; as well as the Slipice, that converts os's in to slippery ice. When bumped from below, the Slipice gives out immediately rather than flipping over; the enemies do not be counted in the direction of the whole number that should be defeated to complete a level. Most iced os's go back to usual in the beginning of each brand new phase.

The "POW" clog up flips each enemies touching a platform or perhaps the floors when a participant hits it coming from below. It can certainly be used three occasions just before it disappears. Through the Super Mario Bros. three in game Player-Versus-Player edition of the minigame, each of the 3 uses causes the enemy to drop a card and all the adversaries to become flipped over. Another element in this tiny remake would be that the piping are straight, at times spitting out large fireballs in the 2 plumbers. When any adversary sort except a Slipice is defeated, a coin is found and also can easily be purchased for bonus points; however, the level ends as soon as the last adversary is defeated.

As the game advances, components are included to take the difficulty. Fireballs possibly bounce over the screen or perhaps traveling directly from just one side on the various other, as well as icicles form underneath the os's as well as fall loose. Bonus rounds give the players a chance to score spare lifestyles as well as points by collecting coins without needing to address enemies; the "POW" clog up regenerates itself on each of the screens.

[sebastiankerben-blog]

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Review

This review was originally published on Artsygamer on April 9th 2017

With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo has done something absolutely incredible and amazing. And after more than 70 hours and beating the main story of the game, I am still not quite sure how they did it.

I was never a fan of the 3D Zelda games. Even Ocarina of Time was not able to keep me interested throughout the whole game back in 1998; something that is still true to this day. I also don’t like open world games that much. So what were the chances of me even liking Breath of the Wild? Yet here I am trying to convey the brilliance of a masterpiece to you without even realizing the full spectrum of it myself.

For the longest time, Nintendo has been infamous for ignoring most of the industry’s achievements and instead focusing on itself. This has been true since it entered the US market in 1985: 2 years after the breakdown of the game industry, nobody wanted to get into videogames; except for Nintendo, which was able to resuscitate a dead industry with games like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. Decades later, their ignorance of the HDTVs and after the failures of the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, which not only lost the market leadership to the less powerful PlayStation and PlayStation 2 from SONY but also struggled against the industry newcomer from Redmond, led Nintendo to the Wii. This time, it was the company itself that rose out of the ashes like a phoenix. But it wasn’t so much the games defining the success but rather the movement control technology. Nintendo, assured that their ignorance of the rest of the industry would led them to new innovations and even bigger success then went on to present the WiiU. A critical failure that started a transformation of this industry heavyweight leading to many improvements in the way Nintendo developed and develops their businesses and Breath of the Wild is one of the products reflecting this transformation.

Breath of the Wild is influenced by many games with more or less open worlds. Aonuma himself explained in interviews that many of the younger designers at Nintendo play a lot of games from other companies and the influences for Breath of the Wild include Minecraft, later Far Cry games, Assassins Creed, Skyrim and the Souls‘ games. But rather than just taking bits and pieces out of those games and throwing them together, Nintendo assessed and transformed them; and by doing that it created something that isn’t afraid to let the player roam free, explore everything that it has to offer and experimenting with crazy ideas that – and this is to the game design’s credit as well – most of the time work out as the player expects.

The first striking thing about Breath of the Wild is its pace in the beginning hours. You wake up, you get your Shieka slate and then you’re sent to the entry of the crypt in which you were sleeping for over 100 years. To leave the crypt, you have to climb and it’s there where the game for the first time introduces a mechanic that we have all seen in other games before but never so well implemented and put to such good use as in Breath of the Wild's kingdom of Hyrule. The whole introduction to the player’s toolset takes about 2 hours in which you acquire the Shieka slate‘s different powers, learn how to protect you from environmental hazards and how to use the game’s manifold system’s to ambush enemies and create paths to places formerly unreachable. Although the game is never shy to show you how useful certain objects or skills are, it also rarely forces its systems onto the player with the exception of the weather system – but more about that later. This leads to playthroughs in which players travel all the way to the final boss only equipped with sticks and apples. Having beaten the game’s final boss I can’t imagine this to be much fun but I also didn’t complete even 30% of the whole game so maybe the time will come when I have completely mastered this game and am in such a dire need for one last challenge that I will try to save Hyrule with nothing more than my boxershorts and twigs. The game would let me do it and this feels empowering. Not only for a Nintendo game but in general.

The story seems to be your run-of-the-mill Zelda story at first: rescue the princess, defeat Ganon, defend Hyrule. And while all of this is true, the way it is presented this time adds much more to the mix than what we got in previous Zelda games at least to my knowledge. I don’t want to spoil any major plot points, but if you follow the story as closely as possible, you’ll see that this Zelda‘s story is not only about a boy saving a kingdom. It’s about a group of heroes that trained their whole lifes to defeat the most dangerous menace glooming over their homelands only to fail miserably. It’s a story about self-doubt, hidden love, rivalry between comrades and recrimination. There is a hidden warning of technologic progress for progress’ sake and a hint at sex discrimination. All of that could have been carved out more for an even bigger impact, but it is there for the player to discover as well as the ruins scattered throughout the world telling tales about that day 100 years ago when the heroes failed their mission.

The gameplay emerges from a complex system of cause and effect. The player can discover a broad range of tools to manipulate wind, use fire, create ice, move iron objects magnetically, cause explosions and even freeze objects and enemies for a short time in which every kinetic energy will be preserved and unleashed as soon as the freeze ends. One can swirl smaller enemies through the air the same way a sailing raft can be forced to move. Use bombs to unveil caverns with treasures or even shrines in it or use them to log trees or even do some dynamite fishing. Lay an ambush by setting dry grass on fire so the wind will led it to circle the enemy group. The game lets you play freely with its systems most of the time but uses one way to remind you that this is still a wild land that can never be tamed completely: through its weather system.

Breath of the Wild's weather system needs and deserves its own mention here because it is something that players need to keep in mind when planning their activities. The most brutal way the weather system can rain on one’s parade is if the player plans to do some abitious climbing. Climbing will drain your stamina and once the stamina is used up, Link will faill to the ground like a rock attached to an iron ball. When it’s raining, surfaces will become slippery which will change climbing in two ways: first, more stamina is used for climbing; second, there is a chance of slipping, causing the player to lose some of the distance covered. It can be brutal and will teach you to always keep an eye on the weather forecast when planning to do some extensive climbing. Apart from simple rain, there are also heavy storms with lightning and thunder and those can wreak havoc if one is not careful. You should stay away from trees, ideally get some cover and you should unequip every weapon, bow and shield made from iron if you don’t want your gravestone to tell people you’ve been struck by lightning. On the other hand, a metal weapon thrown into a group of enemies can yield some nice and fast results and I managed to wipe out a camp of enemies more than once by throwing a metal blade towards an explosive barrel at the right time. I could go on and on about mechanics as an enabler of player freedom but I would probably never finish this review. Just know that this game is filled to the brim with options and possibilities to roam the land, fight enemies and discover (NPCs for example follow their own agenda and meeting some of them at the right place at the right time may lead to something unexpected).

For all the game throws at the player though, it’s also forgiving and supportive. It lets the player pause on all occasions to consume some food for regaining health or stamina and the progress can be saved everywhere (although loading a saved game in a shrine will set you back to the shrine’s entry but your progress will still be saved). There are 120 shrines and beating 4 of them will give you the option to either increase your health or your your stamina. You can also find 900 so called Korok seeds that will enable you to increase your weapon, shield and bow storage. You can find and buy different outfits that provide special perks like letting you swim or climb longer (both activities use up your stamina), increase your attack power or letting you sneak up to enemies faster so you can use the backstab mechanic of the game more often. The game really does a great job to support different play styles and encourage the player to try them out, but it never forces the player to.

Technically this game is a very nice sendoff for the ill-fated WiiU. But we’re living in a Switch world now and this is also the platform I (and most other) play this game on. The elephant in the room is of course the hardware power that a device like the Switch can provide compared to the PS4 and XBox One. Let’s get it out of the way: this game is neither Rise of the Tomb Raider, nor is it Horizon and it was never going to be. Still, with clever use of a pastel-inspired artstyle and an art direction that focuses on the vastness of Hyrule the game regularly managed to make my jaw drop. Climbing a cliff only for the camera to rise above the cliff’s edge and reveal miles of woods and mountains is just one of the occasions where Breath of Wild made me lose myself completely in the game world. Effects for lightning and fire are also put to great use and the way this game visually supports the underlying ruleset of the game world is top notch. The only issue I had with the game were occasional framedrops in places where you wouldn’t expect them. Since the Switch is supposed to be much more powerful than its predecessor I expected a bit more than just a bump from 720p to 900p in docked mode with slightly better but still not perfect performance. Nintendo already released a first patch that significantly improves performance and since there is DLC coming for Breath of the Wild this will hopefully not be the last performance increase we see for the game. Whenever performance was important to the gameplay however, the game delivered so framedrops never affected my enjoyment of the game.

Scoring this game has been the most difficult part of this review. Breath of the Wild is not a perfect game, but no game will ever be. Apart from the score, to me this game is a masterpiece of exploration, empowerment and option. I enjoyed all the time I spent with the game so far and I am looking forward to finding more shrines and secrets and I am curious what interesting things Nintendo will do with the DLC. I mentioned that Breath of the Wild is a reflection of Nintendo‘s current transformation, a transformation that hopefully is all but finished. When the credits of a game roll, I usually try to catch the names of people who – in my opinion – did a very good job as well as people who did a very bad job; you could say I try to channel my admiration and aversion during the credits. When the credits of Breath of the Wild rolled, I wanted to shake the hand of each and every member of the development team and bow to them. It truly is one of the best games ever made.

10 / 10